Charlie Hong Kong Restaurant honored field workers who harvest and pack chard for Lakeside Organic Gardens with a special lunch of Asian fusion cuisine on Earth Day.

Gourmet Trading Co., headquartered in Los Angeles, expects it will harvest a volume of asparagus from its operations in Pasco, WA, that is on par with the 2013 season.

“The harvest began last week and will [conclude] by the end of June,” Marketing Manager Chloé Varennes told The Produce News on April 17. “We are expecting a good quality crop this season.”

The asparagus harvest is currently under way at Snow & Sons Co. “We are getting a normal start, and the cold early weather hasn’t been much of a problem so far,” President Steve Thomas told The Produce News.

“We are running as much as two weeks late on some of our crops this spring,” Dug Schwalls, director of sales for Southern Valley Fruit & Vegetable Inc., headquartered in Norman Park, GA, told The Produce News. “We were faced with heavy rain during the planting season leaving the soil so wet that it set us behind. The late cold snaps only added to the crops being late.”

With expanding staff and a promising crop coming in from its fields around Reidsville, GA, sweet onion giant Shuman Produce Inc. is making moves as it comes into the heart of its signature season, the Vidalia onion deal.

While Shuman is a 12-month grower-shipper of sweet onions from around the Western Hemisphere, the Vidalia onion is what started it all and that offering is still the crown jewel in the Shuman lineup.

“Right now we’re projecting that the cabbage movement in Georgia will start on April 23,” Calvert Cullen, president of Northampton Growers, headquartered in Cheriton, VA, told The Produce News April 16. “Cucumbers are scheduled to begin around May 15, followed by peppers on May 25.”

He noted that the company had already finished the Florida cabbage movement, which left a little gap until harvesting begins in Georgia.